Josef Hoffmann, a German architect, continues designing the Palais Stoclet in Brussels.

Cultural History

1907

The Financial Panic of 1907 starts with the fall of the stock market and leads to the failure of banks throughout the United States.

Cultural History

1908

The architect Cass Gilbert starts designing the Woolworth Building, a Gothic skyscraper in lower Manhattan. When completed, it stands at 792 feet and is nicknamed "The Cathedral of Commerce."

Cultural History

1908

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe joins the Berlin design firm of Peter Behrens, who has a significant impact on Mies's early work.

Cultural History

1908

Production of the Model-T automobile begins in Henry Ford's Michigan factory.

Cultural History

1908

Frank Lloyd Wright designs the Robie House in Chicago, considered one of the most significant houses in the history of American architecture. It is built in the Prairie Style, which emphasizes the structure's relationship to its surrounding environment.

Cultural History

1908

Fritz Haber, a chemist in Germany, develops a process for synthesizing ammonia.

Cultural History

1909

Gertrude Stein publishes her short stories in Three Lives.

Cultural History

1909

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New York.

Cultural History

1910

In Italy, Catholic teachers have to take an anti-modernist oath, in an effort to ensure that traditional tenets and texts of Catholicism are not challenged.

Cultural History

1911

Edith Wharton publishes the novella Ethan Frome.

Cultural History

1911

In New York, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 145 workers. The incident increases efforts to improve working conditions around the country.

Cultural History

1912

The Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage from the United Kingdom to New York.

Cultural History

1913

The Armory Show opens in New York and has a significant influence on American artists.

Cultural History

1913

The first collection of Robert Frost's poetry, A Boy's Will is published.

Cultural History

1913

The Los Angeles Aqueduct is completed, enabling the city to grow exponentially as water becomes accessible.

Cultural History

1914

The Werkbund Exhibit opens in Cologne. Henry van de Velde designs the theatre and Bruno Taut designs a glass pavilion.

Cultural History

1916

Eugene O'Neill's first play opens, Bound East for Cardiff.

Cultural History

1916

One of John Muir's journals, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf is published posthumously.

Cultural History

1916

The architect Irving Gill designs the Dodge House in Los Angeles, in a manner that foreshadows aspects of the International Style.

Cultural History

1916

Margaret Sanger, a nurse and social reformer, opens a birth control clinic in New York that is closed by the police only days later.

Cultural History

1917

In New York, at the Society of Independent Artists, Marcel Duchamp exhibits his first readymade.

Cultural History

1917

Joseph Stella paints Brooklyn Bridge.

Cultural History

1917

Amy Lowell publishes a selection of essays in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry.

Cultural History

1918

Oswald Spengler, a historian in Germany, publishes the first volume of The Decline of the West.

Cultural History

1919

Walter Gropius founds the Weimar Bauhaus.

Cultural History

1919

The Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin constructs the model Monument to the Third International.

Cultural History

1919

The German architect Bruno Taut publishes his Alpine Architecture drawings, in response to the devastation of World War I.

Albert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize for his contributions to theoretical physics.

Cultural History

1921

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe constructs a model for what would have been the first glass skyscraper, had it been built.

Cultural History

1921

Georges Braque paints Still Life with Guitar.

Cultural History

1921

Pablo Picasso paints Three Musicians.

Cultural History

1922

Rudolph Schindler, a Viennese architect living in Los Angeles, completes work on his own residence. The Schindler House on King's Road is the first modern structure to be designed in a way that reflects the mild California climate.

Cultural History

1922

The Toll of the Sea, staring silent film actress Anna May Wong, is the first Technicolor film to come out of Hollywood.

Erich Maria Remarque publishes his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

Cultural History

1930

Josef von Sternberg's film The Blue Angel is released in Germany.

Cultural History

1930

The German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designs the Tugendhat House in the Czech Republic.

Cultural History

1931

The Empire State building opens in New York.

Cultural History

1931

The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze, is the first large-scale modernist European structure to be built in America.

Cultural History

1931

Pearl Buck publishes her novel The Good Earth.

Cultural History

1932

In an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson coin the term "International Style" to refer to a type of architecture.

Cultural History

1932

Socialist Realism is the predominant style for literature and art in the Soviet Union.

Cultural History

1932

On May 21, Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to complete solo transatlantic flight.

Cultural History

1932

The Studentischer Verbandedienst is formed throughout Germany and Austria in opposition to the National Socialist German Student Union.

Cultural History

1933

Gertrude Stein publishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

Cultural History

1933

André Malraux writes La condition humaine.

Cultural History

1934

Langston Hughes publishes The Ways of White Folks.

Cultural History

1934

Henry Miller publishes The Tropic of Cancer. It is banned in the United States until 1961 and is the subject of numerous obscenity trials.

Cultural History

1934

Mikhail Sholokhov, a Russian writer, publishes the novel And Quiet Flows the Don.

Cultural History

1934

In Germany, production begins on the Volkswagen Beetle.

Cultural History

1934

The British writer Robert Graves publishes the novel I, Claudius.

Cultural History

1935

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is begun by the federal government as part of the New Deal. The program provides employment for many artists.

Cultural History

1935

Charles Richter, a geologist in the United States, comes up with a system for measuring the power of earthquakes.

Cultural History

1935

Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propagandist film Triumph of the Will is released.

Cultural History

1935

Zora Neale Hurston's collection of folk tales entitled Mules and Men is published.

Cultural History

1935

W.E.B. Du Bois publishes Black Reconstruction.

Cultural History

1936

In the United States, William Faulkner publishes the novel Absalom, Absalom!.

Cultural History

1936

In response to overcrowded urban living conditions, Frank Lloyd Wright postulates that a solution could be found by varying the density of different zones within the urban environment. He calls his design Broadacre City.

Cultural History

1936

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is released.

Cultural History

1936

John Keynes, an economist in Britain, publishes General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

Cultural History

1937

Zora Neale Hurston publishes her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Cultural History

1937

The Grand Illusion, an antiwar film directed by Jean Renoir, is released in France.

Cultural History

1937

On July 2, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanish over the South Pacific in an attempt to complete a solo flight around the world.

Cultural History

1938

Orson Welles, an American actor, frightens radio listeners during his performance of War of the Worlds.

Cultural History

1938

The British author Graham Greene publishes his novel Brighton Rock.

Cultural History

1939

John Steinbeck publishes the novel Grapes of Wrath.

Cultural History

1939

Raymond Chandler publishes the novel The Big Sleep, which is the basis of two films, one made in 1946 and the other in 1978.

Cultural History

1939

The film Gone With the Wind is released.

Cultural History

1940

Ernest Hemingway publishes the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Cultural History

1940

Richard Wright finishes writing his novel Native Son.

Cultural History

1940

Albert Einstein, living in the United States, writes a letter to Franklin Roosevelt, warning that German scientists may be close to developing an atomic bomb.

Cultural History

1941

American scientists begin work on the Manhattan Project, in an effort to develop an atomic bomb.

Cultural History

1941

Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art opens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Cultural History

1942

Enrico Fermi, a physicist in America, builds a nuclear reactor in Chicago.

Cultural History

1942

The gallery Art of This Century, owned by Peggy Guggenheim, opens in New York.

Cultural History

1943

American journalist Ernie Pyle publishes his collection of war reports from the front entitled Here is Your War.